secure communities was launched in harris county, texas, in october of 2008. we have come a long, long way since that time. secure communities is now deployed in every state of the union and fully deployed in every state save alabama and illinois. put another way, secure communities has been deployed to 3,074 of the 3181 jurisdictions in the united states, a remarkable achievement in just under four years. i am confident we will complete full deployment in the near future starting with the remaining jurisdictions in alabama when the 11 circuit rules on the pending litigation over alabama's immigration law. for the first time in our nation's history, we can uniformly identify individuals who are here unlawfully and are subsequently arrested for a crime provided their fingerprints are on file with the fbi and dhs. this fingerprint sharing between the fbi and dhs, itself mandated by congress in 2002, now permits i.c.e. to identify large numbers of criminal offenders subject to removal as well as individuals who have been previously removed or have an outstanding